Please! Please! Please! Do NOT take this video out of context. It is an exercise for Fun! Fun! Fun! and Creativity. Quality is NOT a criteria. Take it for what it is and not what you would like it to be.

Thank you. Francis

The term, “a swede” was created by the character Jerry (Joe Black) in the movie, Be Kind, Rewind, describing a home-made movie produced with whatever is handy and cheap to tell an existing film’s plotline in less than a minute. The main goal is to have fun when you make it.

I had just watched the movie Vertigo When Hitchcock visited the San Francisco area, he liked it so much that he decided to make a movie using it as a backdrop. The first time I watched Vertigo, I remember thinking it was a documentary about San Francisco and the story was just an excuse to make the film.

What I had that was handy and cheap was my laptop, software and the internet to research, design and produce. It was easy, fast and fun. I used Google Earth and/or Google maps for different research. Google Earth allowed me to recreate the important scenery in the movie. The only important set I could not reproduce was the San Luis Bautista mission tower, which was created for the movie and which I then did myself, using a tool from this Google universe to recreate it in 3D.

After the storyboard was made with comparative shots form the Vertigo movie and Google Earth panoramas, I had to “cast” the characters. I realized I had a fedora (similar to the main character’s hat) and my wife had a classy hat with a “necklace” to represent the second main character. Once all my shots were edited, I animated the characters in Final Cut Pro.

This resulted in a very rough animation. As Hitchcock did in the movie, I used the characters and their story as an excuse to show the background from Google Earth. The overall feeling of Vertigo was a beautiful landscape haunted by two characters.

Enjoy!

The storyboard is the essential pre production tool in the creation of the GooFilm because it helps compare and prepare the different shots from the movie Vertigo and the GooFilm Vertigo. Also like with any other movies, it helps plan the audio segments to the visuals. Click on the icon to download the storyboard.

In a few days I will pot the making-of of the Vertigo GooFilm to show the advantages to use Google Earth as a powerful tool to research, manage, design, animate and create a film. Please, come back soon.

In the movie Vertigo, the only element of scenery that did not exist, was actually the most important of the movie, the San Juan Bautista's mission tower. To film several scenes of Vertigo, the crew had to build it. For the GooFilm, the imaginary tower did not exist in Google Earth therefore we had to build it in 3D to insert it in the GooFilm.

In the end of the film, and the GooFilm, the main character, defeated vertigo, to watch, helpless, his love falling from the tower.

Google Earth offers so many opportunities to research, scout, and film different stories in varied environments that I encourage filmmakers to discover it.

If you have any questions or need any help in using this software, contact@rsfilms.com.